1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to presenting data and, more specifically, to presenting status data received from multiple devices.
2. Introduction
Modern technology has made gathering data easier than ever. For example, computing devices can monitor a variety of things such as location, lighting level, temperature, remaining battery levels, speed, network connection type, etc. Further, wireless data connections make connecting any computing device possible. While modern computing devices and wireless connections make gathering and transmitting data easier than ever, remotely viewing all of this data still faces numerous obstacles.
For one, the variety of device types and the volume of data make viewing data from multiple devices unpractical. Even if an application or interface is provided, viewing the variety of data requires accessing multiple applications to view the data regarding each application. This is both time consuming and resource intensive and provides the user a disjointed view of the data. Secondly, the technical requirements of creating an interface such as an application to allow data from a device to be viewed remotely can be costly and outside of the expertise of many types of product manufacturers. This is especially true for devices such as appliances like an oven or microwave. While being able to remotely view data regarding these devices would be useful, creating an application to view this data remotely may not be financially worthwhile for an appliance manufacturer, especially since writing software is not an appliance maker's expertise, and thus may not be available to a user.
These obstacles result in an underutilization of the current capabilities that computers and networking provide us to share data and thus be better informed to make better decisions. As a result, time and effort are often wasted by uninformed decisions. For example, being able to quickly determine whether the oven was left on can avoid a wasted trip home or higher utility bill resulting from not returning to turn off the oven. Even smaller tasks such as calling a friend can result in wasted time if his or her cellular phone is turned off. Knowing what forms of communication are currently available to contact the friend would result in an informed decision and avoid the wasted time. Accordingly, there is a need for a way to easily share and view data from a plurality of devices so that a user can make informed decisions.